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Collage of five diverse artworks from the Hammer Museum Collections side by side. From left to right: 1) Contemporary painting of two embracing figures with surreal elements. 2) Post-impressionist style painting of trees with vibrant blues and greens. 3) Black and white illustration of a face with intricate patterns. 4) Japanese woodblock print style image of a figure in a checkered robe. 5) Photograph of a couple dancing, the woman in a black dress and the man in white

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Colorful painting of a family looking at a war scene in a mirrored closet door

Tidawhitney Lek

Back to Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living

Tidawhitney Lek destabilizes the way we might try to read the specifics of time and place in her work, creating paintings that blend a sharp attention to the details of everyday life with surreal elements that allude to myth, violence, and history. Her large-scale figurative canvases often feature multiple perspectives, sites, and narratives occurring simultaneously. In Lek’s imagined universe, images of her own life as part of a multigenerational family, the lush beauty of the natural world, and enticing details of patterns and decoration are twinned with the constant presence of memory and an allusion to the possibility of something more sinister. Multiple points in time and different places across the globe coalesce on the canvas; the horrors of the past are brought barreling into the space of intimate domesticity. In Lek’s work, memory is a collective force, and global histories are personal, always shaping the present.

Bio

Tidawhitney Lek (b. 1992, Long Beach, California) received a BFA from California State University, Long Beach. Her work has been shown in recent solo exhibitions at Long Beach Museum of Art (2023); Taymour Grahne Projects, London (2022, 2021); Sow & Tailor, Los Angeles (2022); and Luna Anaïs Gallery, Los Angeles (2021). Recent group presentations include those at Ben Brown Fine Arts, London (2022); Long Beach Museum of Art (2022); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2021); and Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, California (2020).